Dickie's Demise 28-1 - A Decimal Number One Shot
by Mackiecam
Summary: A Ranger POV one-shot that presents a scene from Envious 28. It will not make sense unless you have read Envious 28 first. It is a precursor to Numbskull 29, soon to be published on this site


_I wasn't going to release this until Monday, but one of my readers was disheartened because it was snowing where she lived. I can understand her dismay – it is far too late in the spring to have snow. What will that do to her spring flowers? To cheer her up, I'm releasing this one-shot early. So here you go, M. Hope this cheers you up._

_This one shot takes place after Envious 28 (also posted on this site) and will likely not make sense unless you have read the book prior to this. It is a work of fan fiction – no money has been exchanged for me to write this and is distributed for free, and all characters are owned by Janet Evanovich. Any similarities to real people or events are entirely coincidental._

Dickie's Demise 28.1

Stephanie's eyes were red, swollen and weeping. Mary Lou had given her a good shot of pepper spray when they'd been out skip chasing a bit ago. Stephanie, for some reason, blamed herself for the encounter. I didn't understand it.

"I won't yell at you", I said to Stephanie. She was cowering and trying not to show it, and didn't that piss me off?

"Morelli would have yelled at me."

"I'm not Morelli."

"Dickie would have yelled at me."

"I'm not Dickie."

"My parents would have yelled at me."

"I'm definitely not your parents." I snaked my hand under her hair and massaged the tense muscles in the back of her neck. "Look, babe, I believe that anger is an unproductive emotion. You know that. Even if I was angry at you, which I am not, I wouldn't take it out on you. You can't help your feelings, but you can help your reaction to them. I will never take out my anger on you. I will never take out my anger on anyone."

"You did when you beat up Kanye."

I flushed in embarrassment. Kanye was a pimp that had a habit of getting his girls by abducting them and getting them so hooked on drugs that they'd do anything to get more. I had been furious when Kanye had accosted Stephanie. But even that fury would have been short-lived if Kanye hadn't tried to attack me as I was walking away.

"You're right. But I didn't lose control. Kanye, after I put him down gently…" She snorted. "…got up and attacked me. I neutralized the threat. It was self-defense. End of story."

"I keep thinking that there was something I should have done to stop Mary Lou before she got to the point that she was stealing my pepper spray."

"What could you have done?"

"I don't know."

"That's what you have to hang into, babe. There was no way of knowing that the situation would end the way it had. There was no way of predicting that that Mary Lou would act with the stupidity that she did. This is in no way your fault." She started to cry, and I pulled her hand up to my mouth to kiss her fingers in comfort. "Babe, I wish I could get across to you that I'm not angry and, even if I was, we'd deal with it together. This isn't me against you. This is us together against the problem. Can you let me in? Can you work with me as we solve problems together?"

She was silent for a moment. "It's hard to learn new methods of reacting to things", she said.

I sighed. "I know, babe."

She wiped her nose with the balled-up wet tissue that was in her hand. I removed my hand from her neck and downshifted as I turned into the Rangeman parking garage. I parked and helped Stephanie up to my apartment and into the bathroom, took off her clothes and bundled her into the shower. As I waited outside the shower with a dry towel, I thought about Stephanie's timid reaction to someone's anger. When she was with Morelli, she expected his anger, and she was quite willing to go toe to toe with him in an argument. But when she dealt with me she was terrified of me getting angry. Was she scared of me?

That thought didn't sit right, and I shifted uncomfortably.

I ran over the little I knew about her relationship with Dickie. It wasn't something she talked about much. It's like she tried to wipe it out of her consciousness. So I didn't know what her relationship was like with him other than that he cheated on her shortly after they got married.

I had met her parents several times, however. Her father was loving but barely registered when his family was all in the house. He was a bit of a nonentity and would likely never have yelled at her – unless she was taking the television away from him or she crashed his car. Those were the only times that I could see her father getting angry. Her mother would have been a yeller and a grounder. Most likely, if Stephanie had done something wrong her mother would have cut her off dessert for a period of time. To Steph, that would have been the ultimate punishment. I could see her mother grounding her frequently, yelling at her even more, but I couldn't see her mother ever hitting her.

Did Dickie or Morelli hit her? I kept coming back to the question as I sat waiting for her to exit the shower. My body was tense as I thought about it, but it would make sense. Stephanie was an outgoing, loving extrovert. She had gumption and bravery, and she would fight with the best of them when it came to other people. But she was far too quick to blame herself when things went wrong. And then there was the physical cowering that she tried not to show, the uncertainty as to what I would do when there were problems.

Stephanie turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She looked surprised that I was still there. I took the towel and dried her hair, then tenderly dried her body. I wrapped the towel around her torso and pulled her in for a hug. "I'm sorry", she said. And didn't that piss me off even more? I couldn't see that she had anything to be sorry about.

When I felt her tense, I said quietly, "I'm not angry with you, babe. I'm pissed that you think I would be angry with you. I'm pissed at Morelli for treating you as though you were at fault for everything, even things that were clearly not your fault. I'm pissed at Dickie for treating you the same way. I'm pissed at your parents for not supporting you the way that you deserved to be supported. I'm not, however, pissed at you for what happened."

"It's just that I want you to like me so fucking much."

"I do, babe." She nodded jerkily and buried her nose in my shoulder as I paused. "Did Morelli ever hit you?" I asked her quietly, gently, and hoped that my question didn't spook her.

"No but Dickie did. Once." She told me how he used to threaten to hit her and she learned to keep her mouth shut. She learned to take the yelling and abuse. The one time she yelled back, the day she found him with Joyce Barnhardt on her dining room table, he hit her. I tensed. I wanted to kill the asshole, and they had broken up almost ten years ago. "I've never told anyone about that before", she said in a small voice. I felt honored that she trusted me enough to let me in.

She was silent for a moment. "Morelli never hit me, but I don't really understand it when people yell at me. I'm not a yeller myself. With Morelli, I hated it when he yelled at me, but at least I wasn't frozen and could fight back – unlike with Dickie. With Dickie, I would freeze and, until I found him with Joyce, I was too scared of him to fight back."

I didn't say anything. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my anger in check.

I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and never let her go, and protect her from everybody who had hurt her. I tugged her into the bedroom over to the closet, floated one of my shirts over her head and handed her a clean pair of underwear. I had noticed that she liked to wear my clothes when she was feeling insecure or upset. That was fine by me. I liked seeing my clothes on her, and if wearing my clothes made her feel more balanced, I was all for it. When she was dressed, I led her to the bed and waited until she lay down. I took off my gun belt and lay down beside her. "I have to go soon", I said, "but I really need to hold you for a few minutes."

I pulled her into my body, held her gently and rubbed her back slowly, and let my heart rate settle as I sniffed her clean hair and felt her heat. She buried her nose in my chest and slowly relaxed until, on a sigh, she fell asleep.

I cuddled her for a few minutes more before getting up and putting my gun back on again. I kissed her on her forehead. She sighed in her sleep and smiled. I smoothed her hair away from her face, then turned around and headed back down to my office. When I got there, I shut the door and ran the search engines for Dickie Orr. An hour later, I was finished reviewing the information and I sat back with a smile. "Gotcha", I said, and I picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Hi, Morelli. I have a favor to ask…"


End file.
